To Meander, With a Measure of Confidence
by nostalgia
Summary: Seven people in seven hundred words. (Drabble series thingy)
1. To Meander, With a Measure of Confidence...

  
  
Title: To Meander, With a Measure of Confidence   
  
Author: nostalgia   
  
Rated: PG overall   
  
Summary: Seven lives in seven hundred words.   
  
Category: A series of drabbles, forming a big, weird, fragmented whole. Bit of a rollercoaster - tense, genre and viewpoint vary.   
  
Disclaim: Not mine, never mine, me poor.   
  
The Usual: Feedback lovely, Archiving also lovely.   
  
The Rest: 'Humans' fits in here somewhere ('tween '9.8' and 'Carry Me To Titan', I reckon), but ff.net would get ansty if it was included. Various bits beta'd by various folks; Lins, kbk and Taryn Eve. Thanks to those fab humans for quotemarks, semi-colons, boats and football teams.   
  
  
  
  



	2. The Very Devil

  
  
Title: The Very Devil   
  
Author: nostalgia   
  
Rated: PG   
  
Summary: Little Malcolm and his Struggle With The Grown-Ups   
  
Category: ChildhoodFic (eek), angstorama   
  
Disclaim: Not mine, never mine, me poor.   
  
The Usual: Feedback lovely, Archiving also lovely.   
  
- - - - -   
  
  
"You, Malcolm, are the very Devil."   
  
His mother shook her head and bent to retrieve the pieces of shattered plastic. The boy was eight years old and clumsy, and had just dropped a scale model of the HMS Wellington on the polished wooden floor. She sighed at him.   
  
He wanted to apologise, to say it was an accident; but the fear took him and he ran out the lounge and upstairs, to his room.   
  
His new sister started to cry.   
  
He was going to get as far away as possible. He looked out of the window, to the stars.   
  
  
- - - - - - -   
  
  



	3. Nine Point Eight

  
  
Title: Nine Point Eight   
  
Author: nostalgia   
  
Rated: G   
  
Summary: Travis settles in. Or tries to.   
  
The Usual: Feedback lovely, Archiving also lovely.   
  
The Rest: So, why _does_ it always rain on me? (sorry...sorry...)   
  
  
- - - - -   
  
  
This is Earth-normal gravity, but he is not Earth-normal.   
  
_Lead in your boots_. Oh yes, and lead all over his skin, making his heart work harder and his muscles complain.   
  
If he falls on this ship he will reach the ground faster and it will hurt more. So he'll have to make sure he doesn't fall.   
  
He thinks of cargo ships and zero-g. He lets the metal mug fall from his hand and watches as it drops to the floor with an Earth-normal gravitational acceleration of 9.8 metres per second.   
  
_Lead in your boots_. Oh yes, lead in his boots.   
  
  
- - - - -   
  



	4. Carry Me To Titan

  
  
Title: Carry Me To Titan   
  
Author: nostalgia   
  
Rated: G   
  
Summary: Trip and the Final, y'know, Thingy.   
  
The Rest: OK, Yanks don't have nurseries (Ta for that Taryn ;) ) but I couldn't find a replacement. So, think plants, hmm?   
  
------   
  
  
Titan, Tallahassee, it's all the same. Same sun, same stars... OK, there's the rings an' all, but still...   
  
Half-way to Alpha Centauri's where it starts to get weird. When it suddenly hits you that the gravity well you're in ain't the one you were born in.   
  
Existential angst and all that crap, I guess. Sneakin' out'a the nursery.   
  
Out here though... out here you never quite know where you are. Constellations get all twisted round cos your line of sight's all wrong. Nothin' quite looks the same anymore.   
  
You never get even a little homesick, huh?   
  
- - - - - - -   
  



	5. Cosmopolitan

  
  
Title: Cosmopolitan   
  
Author: nostalgia   
  
Rated: G   
  
Summary: Doctor Phlox meets and greets.   
  
The Rest: First one to say "continuity" gets a slap, OK?   
  
  
- - - - - - -   
  
  
He loves meeting fellow 'aliens'. The humans are charming enough - and fascinating - but it's easy to feel distanced, to feel - as they say - "out of the loop". Of the other non-humans on the ship, one can't talk to him and the other won't.   
  
But these new people are friendly. Explorers, they say, from so very far across the galaxy, seeking a cure for the plague that is killing them. Their technology is impressive, but the people themselves are falling apart. They survive through replacements and nanotech.   
  
He wonders what will become of them, this dying race who call themselves 'Borg'.   
  
- - - - - - -   
  



	6. Splitting Infinitives

  
  
Title: Splitting Infinitives   
  
Author: nostalgia   
  
Rated: PG   
  
Summary: Hoshi and the joys of translation.   
  
The Usual: Feedback lovely, Archiving also lovely.   
  
  
- - - - - - -   
  
  
"I can't...this is like nothing I've seen before, Captain, I really don't think I can translate this."   
  
"Hoshi, they were pretty insistent about sending us that message. We need it translated. I trust your ability to do that."   
  
He did the 'sincere' look at her. _Bastard_, she thought.   
  
So she replaced sleep with syntax; and two days later she stood before him with an English translation. She swayed a little, and her eyes were red.   
  
Hoshi cleared her throat, started to read from her notes; "Simply by passing this message on to five people, you can enter our free prize draw..."   
  
- - - - - - -   
  



	7. Scent

  
  
Title: Scent   
  
Author: nostalgia   
  
Rated: PG   
  
Summary: In which T'Pol knows stuff.   
  
Disclaim: Not mine, never mine, me poor.   
  
The Usual: Feedback lovely, Archiving also lovely.   
  
- - - - -   
  
Her Captain thinks she has a sixth sense, but it's really just a fifth.   
  
It tells her things, information to be subjected to logic and reason - sensory input from which to draw conclusions.   
  
"He can always tell when I'm coming home," he says, shaking his head in a gesture she has learned to interpret as confusion. "How does he do that? How can a dog know where I am?"   
  
_He can smell you_, she knows, but doesn't say.   
  
She breathes in and notes that Ensign Sato reeks of Lieutenant Reed; another secret to keep.   
  
Humans aren't ready to know everything.   
  
- - - - -   
  



	8. What Once Went Wrong

  
  
Title: What Once Went Wrong   
  
Author: nostalgia   
  
Rated: G   
  
Summary: Years later, Archer dreams.   
  
Category: Angstorama. Vague crossoverishness.   
  
The Usual: Feedback lovely, Archiving also lovely.   
  
- - - - -   
  
He had a dream once that he could walk through time.   
  
In the dream he was gifted with hindsight and spoke with an angel. He changed things, because he was allowed to.   
  
He was a wandering saviour.   
  
He dreamt that he went back to the ship, and he gathered his sheep around him and said not to do that, to do this.   
  
And so there wasn't any blood, and there wasn't any smoke and there weren't any screams.   
  
It was a good dream. It felt real.   
  
But in the end he woke up, and they were still dead.   
  
- - - - -   
  



End file.
